Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Sign, sign everywhere a sign

UPDATE: Friday High-Noon. So my other friends at Hampshire Life--the Friday weekly magazine published by the Gazette also addressed this Rt. 91 sign issue (and since they are a weekly with a bricks-and-mortar deadline, I'm fairly sure their story was in the pipeline before my upload on Tuesday). Although I find it even more alarming that these signs will appear over ALL of the 776 miles of state roadways at a cost of $1,720,000):

So while my friends at the Springfield Republican are ridiculing the $timulus $igns that cost $2,700 each (as of course they should) informing folks their tax dollars are at work, I'm kind of wondering about all the new signs along Rt 91 that designate every .2 of a mile and at every mile a larger one with the Rt 91 logo.

Hmmm, so five signs per mile times the 55 miles between the Connecticut and Vermont border is how much? And if your clunker breaks down do you really, really need to know within .2 of a mile exactly where you are?

The emergency call boxes, spaced about every mile, are equally useless. Massachusetts is the only state to use them on Rt. 91 and I bet they never get used because the three in a row I tried did not work. The technology looks like something from the 1970's and does not even allow voice communication.

And in this day and age where everyone has a cell phone why not spend the money on making sure there's cell reception along the entire route and replace the call boxes with cell phone stations?Yes, I hit the top button not one of the emergency ones. Nothing happened (no beep, no light.) Waited two minutes. Then tried the next one down the road; same thing. Then the third one, where I sat for 25 minutes just in case a wrecker showed up. It did not.

Those call boxes were the product of the last Democrat Governor, Mikey D. And the MSP have long urged them to be replaced with cell phones (which the GOP Gov - I forget which one) started to do.

I remember an article where they interviewed a MSP Dispatcher who said that when those buttons got pushed, he didn't know if it was a flat tire or bodies strewn across the highway - but with a cell phone (direct dial to dispatch) he did.

Route 2 also has those 2/10 mile signs up too. Wonder how many will last the winter...